Welcome to the Shroomery Message Board! You are experiencing a small sample of what the site has to offer. Please login or register to post messages and view our exclusive members-only content. You'll gain access to additional forums, file attachments, board customizations, encrypted private messages, and much more!

I have heard that even some of the common mushrooms sold in stores contain volatile substituted hydrazines which are well-believed/known to be carcinogenic in humans. Cooking supposedly minimizes/removes this risk.

Also since said-mushrooms are growing outside, all kinds of things could have grown on/in it - parasites, bugs, other fungi, bacteria all kinds of nasties. Thus cooking is probably a good idea to prevent food-poisoning, which especially in the case of mushrooms is important to prevent so that you don't think that you have mushroom poisoning and have to go to the hospital.

1. Mushrooms are hard to digest. Cooking helps.2. Some toxins are removed by cooking and/or drying3. It kills any bugs

--------------------The Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Mushrooms said, "...the rule of thumb is to avoid any bolete with orange to red pores, especially any that bruises blue."
Lincoff, (1989). The Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Mushrooms (pp. 562). New York: Knopf.

The temperatures reached in cooking are much too low to destroy psilocin and psilocybin molecules. I know it's considered sort of "common knowledge" that heat destroys the active compounds in mushrooms, which is true, but the melting point for both psilocin and psilocybin are somewhere in the range of 170°C (338°F), so the common assumption that cooking will render your shrooms inactive is false. Nothing but a myth.I've had one of the strongest mushroom trips I've ever had just two weeks ago from a mushroom tea I actually boiled for 45 minutes straight AND I threw the actual fruit bodies away. Cooking in plain water works extremely well for extracting the active compounds from the mushrooms and doesn't do much harm potency-wise.

Psilocin and psilocybin, like DMT, can be oxidized easily when exposed to notably high amounts of heat (but especially combustion.) It is for this reason when people smoke DMT they vaporize it as to not degrade the molecule.

Moderate heat shouldn't destroy psilocybin (might mess up psilocin) especially if there isn't a whole lot of oxygen available to oxidize the molecule.

In fact there was a thread awhile back about vaporizing psilocybin - ppl were saying it is as good or even better than vaporized DMT. Would like to try it one day heh =)